outskirts
Britishplural noun
Explanation
Some people like to live downtown. Others prefer the open spaces of the suburbs. But if you live in between the two, you are in the outskirts, the place where the city ends and the suburbs begin. Outskirts describes the outer edge of a city or town, farthest from the center but still technically part of that place. If you had a city map, you could draw a line on all sides where crowded streets filled with apartment buildings and businesses begin to give way to single-family houses and country roads. You might not get a perfect circle but you will see that outskirts are those border places between the city and the little towns that surround it.
Vocabulary lists containing outskirts
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In Kota Damansara on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, a plot of land intended for a data centre remains empty after local opposition.
From Barron's ● Nov. 8, 2026
The first, Aquarius IV, is a tiny galaxy located in the distant outskirts of the Milky Way, approximately 355,000 light-years from Earth.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 7, 2026
Because the Design District has no residences and is mostly retail, the census data relies only on residential data from the outskirts of the tract.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 2, 2026
Wednesday's crash is the worst the country has seen since 2013, when 80 people died on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain.
From BBC ● Oct. 29, 2026
By the time we’ve cleared the rickety buildings of the town and get into the outskirts of the settlement I know that this trip is going to be brutal.
From "Dread Nation" by Justina Ireland
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
